Original subtitles

Welcome to one of the most fabled

and mysterious places on Earth.

The world's oldest continuous civilization.

China, today, is a vision of the future.

It has the fastest growing economy on Earth,

symbolized by architectural wonders

and technological advances.

Long a closed society,

China is now the third most visited country in the world.

New China... bold and forward looking...

is also interwoven with a China

whose roots go back more than four millennia.

It has endured as a single nation

for more than 2,000 years.

How could a large and diverse country

remain unified for so long?

And who created it?

Ancient texts described a first emperor

who initiated the nation's long series

of ruling dynasties.

But there were almost no surviving artifacts

from that era to study.

His name was Ying Zheng.

Originally, he was the leader of a region called Qin,

one of China's seven states of the time.

The states had been at war for more than 200 years

by the time the young king was 29, in the year 230 BC.

He unleashed a campaign

to dominate all of his enemy states

and end the centuries of war.

History mentions the emperor's wartime exploits,

but there were many facts about him

that remained hidden for more than 2,000 years.

But in 1974, that all changed.

A long drought had parched

the central province of Shaanxi.

Grain was dying in the fields,

local villagers decided to dig a well.

What they discovered would change the course of history...

The villagers wondered

if it could be the head of a Buddha,

or would they be punished for taking it?

Or, was it a relic they could sell at the marketplace?

After this first find, farmers discovered more clay fragments,

as well as bronze arrowheads.

Months later, archaeologists arrived.

Their leader was Yuan Zhongyi.

Yuan I didn't expect anything major.

I thought I would be there a week.

But that week turned into months.

We started to find more and more of these clay statues.

The condition and the nature of the clay pieces

suggested they were extremely old.

We had never seen anything like this.

Pieced together, the broken shards

formed a life-sized ancient warrior.

Then another, and another.

We were looking at faces from the deep past.

Why were these objects made?

Why was there nothing written about them

in the ancient history scrolls?

The first bronze sword unearthed at the site

was miraculously untarnished...

And not artwork,

but an actual weapon from antiquity.

It was hard to tell the age of the sword.

Then, there it was.

An inscription at the hilt of the sword

that stated it was made for Qin Shi Huangdi,

the fabled First Emperor of China.

More than 2,000 years ago.

With great excitement, we continued to carefully dig

and discover more and more of these clay figures,

bronze swords, and arrowheads.

We found the relic site

much, much larger than we had expected.

It took us about half a year to find the edge of the site.

Little did we know that beneath our feet

was perhaps the greatest archaeological discovery

of all time.

After 2,200 years, the Emperor's clay warriors

would once again see the light of day.

Eventually, researchers would unearth

almost 2,000 warriors and horses

in a pit more than twice the size of a soccer field,

far beyond anything the archaeologists had imagined.

Two more pits were discovered in 1976.

More warriors, horses, chariots,

and bronze weapons were dug up.

The third pit, the smallest,

is believed to be the army "headquarters",

filled with terracotta generals and officers,

leaders of the warriors in the other two pits.

Researchers believe

this pit was broken into at some point

and the heads were destroyed.

The soldiers are six feet tall,

taller than most people of that time.

Each warrior has a unique face,

all hand-carved by hundreds of craftsmen

who imbued the faces with emotion,

some happy, some sad or angry.

Captivating as the clay figures are,

there were once colorful as well,

painted brilliant hues to make them more lifelike,

one thing that time has diminished.

Imagine how they must've looked 2,000 years ago,

before they were buried and forgotten.

A formidable and resplendent army,

whose ancient mission remained a puzzle

to the first archaeological teams.

We now know that they were created

at the order of the First Emperor.

He commanded craftsmen to fashion an immense clay army.

It was an unprecedented feat,

even by today's standards of mass production.

Today, excavating and piecing together

the thousands of clay figures is a staggering challenge.

Though countless pieces have been recovered,

they are a fraction of what remains buried.

The original archaeologists have retired.

Zhang Tianzhu and Mrs. Lixiu Zhen

continue their work.

Zhang We will be working for generations

to uncover all that the First Emperor buried here.

Every day is filled with anticipation.

Based on recent findings,

we have begun a new excavation in this part

of pit number two.

Though smaller than the first pit,

we believe it will prove to be even richer

in archaeological value.

This is very exciting.

Lixiu We believe there may be

nearly 100 war chariots hidden here

and more than 100 warriors mounted on horses

which could give us important new insights

into the First Emperor's military strategies.

Zhang We are also hoping to find

and preserve figures

that still have a lot of the original painted color on them.

When I say this to people from the outside world,

I always get the same questions:

"What was the purpose of all these soldiers?"

"Why in the world go to so much trouble?"

One answer is that they were not for THIS world

but rather a ghostly army meant to protect

the First Emperor in the afterlife.

The ancient Chinese believed

that life continued after death

and it was not all that different

from what they had known while alive.

They would spend their time

doing what they had always done,

depending on their place in the social hierarchy.

A farmer would still farm in the afterlife.

An emperor would still rule.

To reign supreme after death,

the monarch would need to take the entire apparatus

and all the trappings of power with him into the hereafter.

Like Egyptian pharaohs,

Ying Zheng had begun planning his tomb

shortly after taking the throne as King of the Qin state.

His rule would continue in an underground palace

outfitted as grandly

as his royal residence during life.

It would be an immense mausoleum

covered by a great mound.

Twenty-five stories tall,

its size would rival the Pyramids of Egypt.

Since an emperor had many enemies,

he would need an army standing guard before his tomb

throughout eternity.

The warriors were not mere decorations.

They were meant to serve the Emperor in the afterlife

as real soldiers had during life.

At age 29, Ying Zheng had already survived a coup

and assassination attempts.

The young Qin king had become a commanding presence

with a towering ambition.

He would conquer the rest of China's major states,

in a devastating series of battles

lasting almost a decade.

Some rival armies were so intimidated

by the fierceness and size of his Qin army,

they surrendered.

Some were tricked, others crushed.

Ying Zheng's secret?

A massive number of warriors, well trained,

with superior weapons and attack strategies.

How did the Qin army compare to some of the greatest armies

of the past?

Alexander the Great,

who conquered most of the western world,

commanded only 47,000 troops at any one time.

Genghis Khan, brilliant Mongol warrior,

had an army 100,000 strong,

most mounted on horses.

Napoleon, who conquered all of Europe,

amassed a huge army combining allied forces.

At their peak, they were 680,000 strong.

The First Emperor, according to ancient writings,

conquered the warring states by organizing an army

of a million warriors!

Battles were enormous clashes

that could leave 100,000 fatalities

and countless wounded.

But the clay army reveals

that it was not by superior numbers alone

that the Qin forces prevailed.

It was also through shrewd strategy

and superior technology.

The terracotta warriors amount to "time capsules"

revealing secrets we thought were lost to the ages.

The terracotta army mirrored

the formations of his real army.

One of the keys to the invincibility

of the Qin military turns out to be

right in the first three rows of the battalion.

Though rotted away now, or stolen over the centuries,

technologically advanced crossbows, real ones,

were once held by the clay warriors

in the first three lines.

Under the First Emperor,

the Qin had devised an innovative crossbow design

that could shoot arrows half a mile,

and with great accuracy.

A triggering device made the weapons

easier to hold steady, and fire.

Infantry and chariots were arrayed in 38 columns,

backed by more columns guarding their flanks and the rear.

The Qin army went largely undefeated.

Ying Zheng had replaced traditional peasant armies

with the first professional military in China's history.

The exploits of the REAL Qin army

led to a stunning achievement.

The first ever unification of all China,

celebrated by thousands who could not have imagined

how long their empire would endure.

With the conquest of the six warring states,

Ying Zheng and his Qin army

controlled much of what is now modern day China.

Many historians believe that the English word "China"

comes from the word "Qin".

It was a vast countryside, full of natural riches.

From inner Mongolia to the north

to the boundaries of the Yellow River to the West.

East to the Yellow and East China Sea,

and as far south as modern day Guangzhou.

This was the land that the First Emperor unified.

The year is now 221 BC.

The King of Qin, at the age of 38,

has unified the nation.

He gives himself a new name, Qin Shi Huangdi,

literally, "First Emperor of the Qin".

So communities across his new empire could communicate,

the First Emperor standardized many aspects of life.

All citizens would have the same currency,

weights and measures, and use the same writing system.

The result? A more cohesive country,

which has stood the test of time.

With the various territories now unified,

the Emperor knew that if his new empire was to last,

he had to secure its borders.

The greatest threat came from the warring nomadic groups

that could attack from the north.

Qin Shi Huangdi began a massive construction project,

rebuilding earlier defensive walls

in the states he had conquered,

and connecting them into a barrier

stretching more than 3,000 miles.

It cost a fortune,

and cost as well the lives of untold thousands of laborers.

Some 1,600 years after Qin Shi Huangdi,

the Ming Dynasty re-built and expanded

his long, mainly earthen barrier into the colossal,

stone-and-brick Great Wall we know today.

To speed the movement of troops and supplies,

and to improve public transportation as well,

the First Emperor built a network of canals.

Some are still used today.

The Lingqu Canal, near modern day Guilin,

connects the branches of the Yangtze River

and the Pearl River.

It was the first canal in the world

to connect two river valleys, and enabled ships to travel

1,200 miles from inland China to Hong Kong.

The massive infrastructure of roads and waterways

built by the Emperor was one of the keys

to the success of his dynasty.

Soldiers, weapons, food and supplies

could all be dispatched quickly

to quell uprisings throughout the country.

Qin Shi Huangdi is one of history's

most contradictory figures...

a monarch of great achievements,

but also, according to some accounts,

a ruthless and brutal tyrant.

He supposedly ordered the burning of all books

but those on farming and medicine.

When intellectuals protested,

the Emperor had them buried alive.

With his empire under control,

the Emperor became obsessed with the idea

that he might live forever.

He sent subordinates out to all corners of his empire

in search of an elixir that would make him immortal.

Alchemists of the time believed mercury could help extend life.

Until an elixir could be found, he was fed balls of mercury,

unaware that it was actually poisonous.

No one found that immortal elixir

and the mercury tablets gradually destroyed

the Emperor's body and mind.

He became ever more erratic and paranoid.

Having survived at least three attempts on his life,

he became convinced

assassins were again plotting to kill him.

To escape them, he spent more and more time

away from the palace, traveling in the countryside

with his closest advisor and son.

His health declined rapidly on the road.

The First Emperor of a united China,

the most powerful man of his time,

died from the mercury he took to avoid death,

killed by his own ambition to live forever.

He never returned to the palace alive.

He was sealed into his royal casket

and, across millennia, while hundreds of emperors

and many dynasties followed him,

Qin Shi Huangdi's vast underground tomb complex

was forgotten.

The mound has never been excavated.

It remains one of the last

great historical mysteries on Earth.

Lixiu The only written record

of what may be inside Qin Shi Huangdi's tomb

is a book written 200 years after his death.

In Records of the Grand Historian,

Sima Qian describes the lavish interior of the mausoleum.

This is what he wrote...

Zhang They dug through three layers

of groundwater, and poured in bronze for the outer coffin.

Palaces and scenic towers were constructed,

and the tomb was filled with rare artifacts

and wonderful treasure.

Mercury was used to simulate the hundred rivers,

the Yangtze and Yellow River, and the great sea,

and set to flow mechanically.

Above were representations of the heavenly constellations.

Legend has it the stars were made of

precious jewels and pearls.

Qin Shi Huangdi's body is said to lie on a map

of the Chinese terrain he ruled over,

dressed in the grandeur he hoped would follow him

into the afterlife.

The entire tomb complex

amounts to an underground city of the dead.

Not only the Emperor's mound-covered tomb chamber

but an array of pits around it,

including the terracotta warriors.

How could this monumental complex

have been forgotten for more than 2,000 years?

On orders of the Second Emperor,

the principal craftsmen who built the tomb

were walled inside it

so they couldn't reveal the tomb's secrets.

In time, there was no one left who even knew of its existence.

Though we have not yet seen inside the tomb,

researchers have discovered that Qin Shi Huangdi

took with him more than just an army.

It appears he wanted to be entertained in the afterlife.

Archaeologists have unearthed acrobats, strongmen, musicians,

as well as terracotta officials and bureaucrats.

They discovered a replica of the imperial garden,

with more than 45 bronze waterfowl,

including ducks, geese and cranes.

People ask me:

Why do you spend all of your effort

on the pits around the Emperor's tomb?

Why don't you open the tomb itself?

The answer is:

The danger of damage to its contents

is too great now.

We learned a terrible lesson a few years ago.

We excavated a figure with the colors still intact.

When we took it outside, the paint immediately curled up

and peeled off right before our eyes.

In ten minutes, the color was gone.

I felt horrible, but there was nothing we could do.

Lixiu In the meantime, we're using

remote sensing devices such as ground-penetrating radar

and different kinds of tomography

to get a general idea of what's down there.

Until we can protect 100 percent of whatever lies

beneath the mound, we have to wait.

That is hard, considering the incredible wonders

purported to be buried there.

We've confirmed a large tomb complex.

We also believe we have identified

an underground palace.

And, amazingly, above the tomb,

a pyramid-like ten-story building...

perhaps a kind of pathway

for the emperor's soul to leave the tomb.

But until we excavate, we can't know

if the fabulous things in historical texts are true.

Had it not been for well diggers

seeking water for their crops,

countless more generations might have passed

without ever glimpsing the remarkable relics

the First Emperor left behind.

The Qin Dynasty disappeared,

but advancements made by the First Emperor

have made possible

the long survival of the country to this day.

His harsh rule is well documented.

But he is also the man who created

a vast infrastructure of roads and canals.

He secured the borders,

standardized weights and measures,

currency, and the writing system.

Qin Shi Huangdi built the foundation of modern China.

Today, his country is a dynamic blend of ancient and modern,

one of the most mysterious

and exciting places on the planet.

China continues to honor and discover its past,

while also taking its present and future place

as a major world leader.

First Emperor Qin Shi Huangdi searched for immortality.

In Emperor Qin's own way,

the relics and monumental advances he left behind

ensure that his name will not be forgotten.

In a sense, he found the immortality

that he so desperately sought.